Venus Transit June 8, 2004



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Composite of 11 transit images, taken at 32-minute intervals.
Variations in the darkness, size, and shape of Venus are due to
atmospheric refraction and seeing at the beginning when the Sun was
near the horizon, to better seeing and higher altitude of the sun as
the transit progressed

I went to England to image the long-awaited transit of Venus. Terry Platt, founder of StarlightXpress, kindly allowed me to join him near their office, set up on a garage rooftop, to image the transit. My equipment, which had to be highly portable for airline travel from the U.S., consisted of:
Takahashi Sky90 Apo Refractor
Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel 6.3mp Digital SLR Camera
Old, tiny, manually-operated (no motors) Tasco Equatorial Mount
Thousand Oaks glass solar filter


June 8 2004 10:16:08 AM GST
The Transit of Venus, June 8 2004 Mid-transit from Holyport, England
(click image for a full-sized version)

There has been a lot of discussion on various web e-mail groups since the transit about the reality of the so-called "Black Drop Effect" -- when Venus is very near to one edge of the sun, either the black edge of Venus or the black area just outside the edge of the sun will appear to "merge" together, making the sliver of light between the planet and the edge of the sun disappear and appear as a black drop. In carefully examining my own images of the event, I can find no evidence of the black-drop effect, as seen below:


2X enlarged Image just before third contact, showing a clear opening
between Venus and the solar surface, and no black-drop effect

I have seen other images that show the effect; since the seeing at Third Contact at my location was excellent, and my optics critically focused, my results would seem to indicate that the black-drop effect is an illusion that is caused by less than optimal seeing conditions or effects from the optics of the instrument used. This by no means settles the debate, but is just one more point of data!


The portable travel setup I used for the transit...


My host, Terry Platt, and myself -- getting ready for the event Tuesday morning!

More images to come as I have time to actually process them...

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